so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly just done 2m and some 70cm stuff, little bit of satellite which was fun but anyway i keep hearing people talk about HF and how its a completely different world and it got me curious about upgrading. i downloaded the question pool and honestly some of it looks pretty intimidating, like the propagation stuff and all the math for calculating things. i dont really have a background in electronics at all, just kind of stumbled into the hobby through a friend.

is the General exam actually hard or does it just look harder than it is? and is there like a recommended order to study things or should i just grind through the question pool? also once i pass, what bands am i actually going to be able to use that i couldnt before, im a little fuzzy on exactly where my privileges expand to

honestly the General exam is not as bad as the question pool makes it look. i had zero electronics background when i upgraded and i just used the HamStudy website and did like 20-30 minutes a day for maybe three weeks. the propagation questions are actually kind of interesting once you start to get it, like it starts to click why 40m works great at night and 10m is all over the place depending on the solar cycle.

as for privileges, the big ones youre going to care about are 40m, 20m, and 17m for starters. 20m especially is where a ton of DX action happens and as a General you get a solid chunk of it. 40 meters is great for domestic stuff and ragchewing, you can hit most of the country pretty reliably. youll still have some parts of the bands that are Extra only but honestly as a new HF operator you wont even notice for a while, theres plenty of room. just do it, it opens up a whole other side of the hobby

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so pretty fresh for me. the math stuff i was worried about too but theres really not that much of it and a lot of the formulas you kind of just memorize for the test and then slowly start to actually understand later when you use it. the electrical theory section was the part i had to read through a couple times but it wasnt killer.

one thing i didnt expect was how much the band plan stuff matters, like knowing which segments are phone vs cw vs digital, that shows up on the test more than i thought it would. get a cheap HF rig or even just start listening on a SDR dongle to the HF bands before you take the test and it honestly helps the whole thing make more sense